diy Projects

03/01/2013

It's been a while since I sat down and took my time crafting anything. My baby girl is due in about 2.5 months - so I think this has something to do with it. Yesterday I decided to make some wall art to hang in her nursery.

I used embroidery floss, and printed out the word Love for a template. I used the printed template to poke holes through the paper & canvas using a pin. This way I had a guide for the letters.After I finished the word love- I used a piece of fabric (with my owl design from Spoonflower) to make a heart balloon. I stitched around the heart, left a small opening and filled it a little pillow stuffing little to add dimension.
Once I put the stuffing in- I just finished stitching around the heart.I love how it turned out, and it was fun playing with my own fabric design. Let the nesting begin....

02/14/2013

Have you guys played with the new mini paper bags yet? They are so much fun! You can get a pack of mixed designs or order in bulk with 25 of the same design- perfect for parties!

I also experiemented using one of the Tim Holtz bigz dies on the lid of a ball jar so a straw can go through. It was really, really difficult to cut (and I only cut one lid) but it turned out cute. I might try it again with a simpler shape.

If you need an easy valentine for today- Here's a tutorial on how to make these little paper fortune cookies. You can add a little note inside for a friend or loved one.

Stay tuned tomorrow for a special giveaway and exciting news. Hope you all have a wonderful day!

01/22/2013

I wanted to have some vintage cameras decorated with my new designs for my booth at CHA. I covered three cameras with my new washi tapes, but I still wanted to figure out a way to transfer my other patterns to the cameras. I remembered Jonathan Fong showing me a wonderful product called Craft Attitude last summer. I thought this was a perfect application for this, and was super excited to try it out. This was my first time using the products, and it was everything I hoped for. Here is the step-by-step on how I created the cameras.

Craft Attitude is a clear inkjet printable film, so I had to paint the cameras white for I my designs to show up. I used tape to mask off the areas I didn't want painted.

I painted the cameras with white spray paint made for plastic.
I printed my designs using my inkjet printer directly on the film. While I was letting it dry a little bit, I made a rough template for the camera out of paper.

I used the paper template to cut out the film, then I peeled off the backing.

I carefully laid the film on the painted surface and worked it until it conformed to the shape. I think the fresh paint helped it stick, and I used a glue stick and hair dryer to make sure it had good adhesion all around.

Once the face of the camera was covered, I cut away some of the extra film to make it easier to wrap around the sides. I used a glue stick and hair dryer again to finish it off.

I was surprised at how well it turned out, and I think I chose a hard first project to try it on. I used the Scrapbook Attitude, but I think any of the Craft Attitude products will work.
I also used it on the typewriter in the post below.

07/27/2012

My sister recently turned 30 and I had fun getting her present together. I always love wrapping presents and making them pretty. Since I just got my new Everyday Eclectic collection in the mail, I was excited to start using it. The card was made using the woodgrain chevron paper and some stickers from it.

I kept the wrapping paper simple by using a trader joes paper bag (turned inside out). All I did was add some washi tape and stickers to make it pretty.

For the kraft bag I made washi tape flowers! These are fun to add to any project. Do you guys have any tips you use for wrapping presents?

04/12/2012

03/30/2012

When Adelle was baptized I wanted to make her a special headband for the day. I had some extra peices of material leftover from my wedding dress, and thought it was the perfect fabric for the headband.

For this project you'll need a piece of fabric about 1" x 18". If you have a long enough piece of fabric then this could be a no-sew project. I did however use my sewing machine to make a long enough piece to use.

Start by folding your fabric in half and rolling the center together. Use a hot glue gun to keep it together. (your fabric will probably not be as stiff/thick as my wedding dress fabric shown here) Keep rolling the fabric around the edges and add glue as needed.

Glue the last part of fabric to the side of the flower. I repeated the steps above for a 2nd flower, and added them to a vintage piece of elastic I found.

12/07/2011

Some of you might remember this post from last year about these wallets. Well, I made them again (using my paper designs) for some local holiday art shows and I've had some requests to put them on etsy. Everytime I make these, I want my designs to be printed on fabric as well.

There's only a few wallets for sale right now. I have some more I will list over the next few days. Visit my etsy store here.

*I also have an art show this weekend in Cupertino, CA (Dec.10th) Please e-mail me if you would like details. I will be selling mostly my hand-blown glass (lots of ornaments and pumpkins), plus a few wallets.

12/01/2011

You can't go wrong with any holiday decor that uses vintage ornaments, and these wreaths are no exception. These are my absolute favorite Christmas decoration, shiny, colorful, and bright! My sister made these about 5 years ago using my mom's collection of ornaments. The gold and pink wreaths use vintage ornaments (from garage and estate sales), which makes them even more fabulous!

They are real easy to make. All you need are ornaments, a styrofoam wreath (from the craft store), and a glue gun. She spray-painted the styrofoam wreath first to match the colors of the ornaments. The pink wreath is pink, gold is gold etc. That way if it shows underneath, it's very subtle. My mom actually keeps these up all year round...they are too pretty to pack away and store for 11 months out of the year.

11/14/2011

My sister lives in an old building (which used to be a mansion) that's converted into different apartments. She wanted to decorate one of the walls but since it's very old she could only hang light-weight decorations. I was excited when she told me her idea for wall decor. I gave her a bunch of embroidery hoops that I had been collecting at garage sales for cheap. Then she went through my stash of scrap fabric (and a friends) to find colors that looked good together. She decided to hang a variety of embroidery hoops with different pieces of fabric inside. Super easy and it turned out cute! (I just need a different camera lens to get a pic of the whole room to share...)

11/02/2011

For Halloween this year I decided to dress up as an Owl. I saw this tutorial on Elise Larson's blog (abeautifulmess.typepad.com) last year by Chelsea from Seablanket.com. She created a DIY lady bird costume that looked like a lot of fun to make. I made mine a little different so it looked more like an owl. I started by pinning all the yellow feathers to my dress, and followed her directions to work from the bottom of the dress up when added the remaining feathers. I quickly switched to gluing the feathers and used Aleene's Fabric Fusion glue. (This glue saved me!) I also cut the feathers with a point instead of rounded ones like hers. The mask was made from felt and scrap fabric and put it on a headband. I thought the look would be complete once I crimped my hair to look like feathers. (one of my favorite purchases from college) The costume did take me a long time, more like 3+ hours. Since I've had my baby Adelle everything takes longer now:)

...and of course I have to show what Adelle was dressed up as. Yoda! My husband bought the costume because she is "yoda's size"!

12/20/2010

When I was at a garage sale, I found a bunch of brand new onesies for 25 cents - $2.00 each. They were plain white or had a nike logo on them. Since they were new, I figured this would be a fun challenge to find a way to make them cuter! I knew right away that the Sukie Iron-Ons from Chronicle books would be a perfect to use on the white ones, plus I could use the iron-ons to cover the logo. (at least most of it) I still have a few more to iron on, I want to use the tree and buildings you see on the cover- but this is what I have so far.

11/16/2010

I've bought these wallets from Dear Sukie in the past and absolutely love them. When I found out Kristy was on Martha Stewart and shared a tutorial I decided to give it a "try" using some of my favorite papers. Here's how mine turned out.

It was fun adding the rub-ons, and the little custom tags like she does on the back.

The best part was picking out an assortment of papers for each wallet. It's fun to see my designs used like fabric for the wallets.

The rest of the project didn't go as well as I planned. It took way longer than I thought it would, there are a lot of pieces to keep track of. Sewing through the all the layers of vinyl was a little tricky. Next time I think I'll contact Kristy at Dear Sukie and have her custom make a few more for me. Her prices are really reasonable, and they would be great gifts for the holidays!

This did inspire me to create a new project using vinyl for purses. I'll be posting that project/tutorial closer to Christmas.

11/14/2010

This year I'm excited to be a part of Bizaar Bizarre in San Francisco. I usually go each year as a customer, it's the perfect place to get a fun selection of hand-made gifts from all the crafters there. This year I'll be there running a booth for Hambly. (Either my mom or Zach will be helping out). I'll be teaching a variety of make-n-takes using some of my favorite Hambly products I have designed. The "Moustache-on-a-straw" project I created special for this show. I thought they would be fun to make for holiday parties, with all the festive drinks this time of year. The show is at Fort Mason in SF Dec. 11 & 12. If you come to the show be sure to stop by and say hi :)

10/28/2010

Last night I had a few friends over to carve pumpkins, so I decided to make some Halloween garland for decoration. Here's a quick tutorial for 2 different garlands. You could easily make this garland for any holiday and just swap out the colors and images.

Happy Halloween!

-Allison

First I gathered the paper I wanted to use, the Hambly Brocade in orange and black was perfect for Halloween. I also wanted to add some vintage paper, so I took some pages with a gothic looking font out of an old book. (It was from a estate sale and in German, so I wasn't planning on reading it anytime soon.) I cut out a variety of birds on the papers using my silhouette. You could also easily use die-cuts instead. The vintage paper from the book was really thin, so I used a Xyron 250 create-a-sticker to adhere it to stronger paper. This was my first time using this Xyron machine. It's perfect how it covers the entire cutout, even the thin delicate parts with adhesive. Next I used my sewing machine and connected the birds using a straight stitch to make the garland! I just kept sewing one bird after the other.

After I finished the bird garland, I decided to make a quick coordinating Halloween Banner. I grabbed my pinking shears and cut out little flags in a variety of the same papers. I added some black sticker letters to the banner to spell out Happy Halloween, then glued 2 papers together for each banner to add more dimension. I wanted the banner to be stronger at the top, so I used a zig-zag stitch over bakers twine which worked great. This banner went together really fast!

09/20/2010

We don't normally post some of the press we get, but we thought this was really fun! VOGUE Patterns, a sewing magazine featured our rub-ons & sewing stickers as editors choice. It's a great to see our Hambly products shown in a new magazine! Plus it's cool they have a picture of the rub-ons on the DIY Bangles. This is an easy & popular project if you haven't tried it yet. (You can see a video half-way down in this previous post from CHA)